Post by Anders on Nov 30, 2019 19:18:12 GMT

Even by UEFA's standards it was ridiculously officious and complicated. The fact that they can put so many permutations in and still end up with a group like F is laughable.

Don't know how Portugal ended up in Pot 3. They've won the last two Uefa international tournaments and there was supposed to be some sort of benefit of winning the Nations League when it came to this wasn't there?

Post by Lobster on Dec 1, 2019 14:09:34 GMT

Even by UEFA's standards it was ridiculously officious and complicated. The fact that they can put so many permutations in and still end up with a group like F is laughable.

Don't know how Portugal ended up in Pot 3. They've won the last two Uefa international tournaments and there was supposed to be some sort of benefit of winning the Nations League when it came to this wasn't there?

No, the pots were apparently decided entirely by performance in qualifying, so Pots 1 and 2 were made up mostly of group winners, along with the Netherlands and Russia, who had the best records as runners up. I think the only benefit of winning the Nations League is that it meant Portugal automatically qualified for the playoffs even if they missed out on automatic promotion, which was never likely to happen.

I always think that Ronaldo aside, Portugal are quite a limited team, but they're a bugger to play against. They just know how to play referees and grind out results.

On another note, there's a strong possibility of Croatia v Serbia in Glasgow, which won't be for the faint-hearted!